Digital Transformation, the right way ..
In my many years of experience, I have witnessed and have been part of many digital transformation projects that have driven corporation to increase efficiency, productivity, revenues and customer experience. I have also noticed that many companies attempting to move towards digital transformation lacks the basic understanding of what is required to actually achieve this and end up summarizing the transformation in few words “Let us build an application”
One thing to note, transformation in any organization is not a simple nor straight forward project. Especially if the organization is well established with multi-systems, solutions, processes, procedures, departments and people. For many of such organizations, transformations mean mergers and layoffs, which usually leads to internal resistance. No matter how much change is needed, there must be resistance. The simplest change of reorganizing the seating of people in an organization leads to resistance, what if this change can lead to fully automating your work??
With new emerging companies going digital is already embedded within the core of the company’s goals. So new companies can easily adapt and plan the way forward by properly diverting their thinking towards keeping it digital. Yet it might require a lot of upfront investment to actually achieve the first milestone of building a cohesive eco-system that takes into consideration internal and external customer requirements.
Good to keep in mind that transformation will always be a continuous process that will change, change and change over and over again. The most important factor is to make sure that the foundation is built to accept changes in the future, that goes into everything the resources, software, processes and hardware selection. So, you have to make sure that whatever investment your company makes into transformation has the longevity needed to grow with your company.
Now on how to start, where to start and when to start the journey towards digital transformation. Good news, you have probably started this journey but working silos where different department in your organization are looking to automate most of their processes and procedures. If that’s what is happening now then you will not achieve the goal. This project or rather program need to be driven from top to bottom and built bottom up. So instead of re-inventing the wheel, its best as leadership to bring together all the current project running in your organization and to allocate the team, from program managers, project managers and stakeholders to drive the project with one goal and vision. Define what exactly do you want to achieve from the activity, so that the team is able to build the necessary scope, plus to make sure that what is being built has considered interoperability i.e. any project that is done in your customer service department is linked to your marketing, sales, HR, technology ...etc. This would be a good time to check if what is being developed is hitting the right check marks in your box, that is One Eco system, Takes into consideration customer experience (Internal/external), Cost effective in the long run (Business case), simplicity and innovation.
With this approach you might have a bumpy start but with continuous feedback loop you will start to see the fruits of such development. You must also remember that transformation is needed as well in the people you currently work with or serve. You want them to be involved and to understand what is currently being done or will be developed will be for the best. Then you can equip them earlier to be ready for the change with the necessary skills required to adapt both internally and externally.